


The Wife of my Enemy

by Nitrobot



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers: Prime
Genre: F/M, Forced Marriage, Hatchlings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 22:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6726514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Optimus has finally killed Megatron, and the Autobots rejoice on their restored homeworld. But Megatron left behind more than just destruction and destitute Decepticons; his widow is Airachnid, and Optimus must take her as his wife or risk a repeat of the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wife of my Enemy

**Author's Note:**

> So recently a friend of mine came up with an AU idea that I figured I'd try bringing to life in a short oneshot. She put it like this; “Megatron rules Cybertron with his Decepticons, and Airachnid is his queen. Optimus and the Autobots defeat Megatron, and Optimus is made new leader. And in order to cement his leadership, Megatron's widow Airachnid becomes his queen.”   
> Though I use TFP characters I've used Bayverse as the setting since I think it fits best with the drama and the idea of Optimus managing to kill Megatron (and cause I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes Bayverse).

No one had to tell him it was necessary, because he was already painfully aware of it. No one had to wish him luck, because any worthwhile luck would have meant he wouldn’t even be in this situation. And no one had to tell him how much Megatron’s widow and his surviving followers hated him as he stood beside her before the Council Hall. Airachnid made that obvious enough when she watched him snuff out her husband's spark.

As Optimus expected, it wasn't so much a wedding as it was a contest of who could go longest without spitting in the other’s face. Though Airachnid was forced into the formal flowing cowl of a Prime’s betrothed with back legs forming jagged peaks beneath it, she refused to change the armour underneath from the scuffed, stained plates that she wore the day her last husband was killed, refused to even look at him other than to give her glare a new target to burn into. And though Optimus tried to look respectful for both of them, sooner or later his optics eventually locked onto the dead emblem still stubbornly planted on her chestplates, and he was scowling behind the shield of his battlemask.

He'd have to learn to accept it. After all, with Megatron dead, it didn't have much meaning left behind it other than a symbol of a bad dream. 

Victory-drunk Autobots and depressed, defeated droves of Decepticons alike were forced side by side as they watched the last Prime say “I do” to the last monster left alive on Cybertron. He was forced to retract his mask to seal the contract, and as he kissed her he could almost taste the acid on her lips, feel her fangs nicking his mouth and a quick lap at the energon welling from the wound. Pulling away from her so sharply only tore the wound open more, and Airachnid was almost grinning past bloody denta as Optimus pulled his battlemask safely over his jaw. 

Whether or not the Bondmaster, hiding his revulsion for Airachnid much less successfully than Optimus, noticed the grisly exchange, he was wise enough not to call attention to it. He simply bowed, closed his ceremonial replica of the Covenant, and cast Optimus a look full of pity that, on any other day, would have earned a smack on the helm.  
On that day though, it just reassured Optimus just how doomed he was with his new wife. 

Tradition demanded that he sweep her into his servos, all eight legs dangling under her cowl and rose optics fluttering up at him with a sickening sweetness. Those who approved cheered wildly, those who didn't had to cheer regardless.   
All the way up the Iacon Plaza steps, into the achingly deserted Council Hall and further still to the long-abandoned Tower of Primes, he was followed by hoards of optics and ghosts. One ghost in particular, watching her sparkmate wed another so easily. 

The deja vu was cruel, a bitter weight on Optimus’ spark crushing his core into powder so that only grief was left to course along his circuits. He could hardly walk by the time he reached the Tower’s top floor, and Airachnid shoved herself out of his servos before he could just let her fall. Then she said the first words he'd heard from her since she vowed to rip his spark out through his throat.

“Eight legs all on hand, and you don't even let me walk with two of them,” she muttered, shaking her helm and almost tearing her cowl on her horns before it collapsed around her neck. 

Optimus was still half in a trance as he relayed explanation in a growl. “It was part of the ceremony. Do not think I would touch you otherwise.” Decepticon, techno-organic and lover of a tyrant like Megatron, it was miracle his hands weren't trying to tear themselves from his wrist joints.

But Airachnid was trying to tear through the ties of the cape and paused, talons holding the frayed ends as she stared at him. Not with fear, or even surprise as the air around them rippled with the first simmers of his anger. No, it seemed similar to the pity that the Bondmaster gave him. She could sense the depth of his weakness, obvious as it was, but all she did was splay her grotesque back legs out, throwing the rest of her cowl off to let it soak the ground in red before retreating to the nearest room, the one she'd remain in for the next few decacyles. With two legs on the handles she slammed the door closed without even a smirk or some barbed quip to keep him hurting for the rest of the long, long day.

Optimus had no complaints about it. No one was truly expecting them to consummate the marriage, and even he had limits to his duties. He still remembered where his own quarters was- found that Airachnid had claimed it for herself, and moved to the room furthest away from her. If Primus was merciful, he’d recharge without cycle terrors for once and find the whole ceremony, the whole war, was a terrible dream. A fate meant for poor bots leagues in the future, not for him. Not for Elita One.

But he awoke, and his berth was as empty as it had always been for the last millennia. In a resurrected ritual he groaned, hissed his optics closed, and left a fist-shaped imprint in the nearest wall before fitting his armour on for the day. Airachnid still seemed to be locked away, and he didn't bother disturbing her before descending the Tower to the hungry masses. His soldiers met him in the Hall, gave awkward half congratulations and half apologies for the state of affairs, poorly disguising “affairs” as Cybertron and not the beast now living just miles above them. Arcee was the only one missing, no doubt quashing the urge to slaughter him for laying any hand that wasn't fitted with a blade on Airachnid. But her pain, her anger, would pass eventually. His would keep haunting him in rosy optics and razor sharp caresses.

 

**xx**

 

The guards and stewards of the Tower were competent enough that he didn't need to check in on her every solar cycle, didn't even need to bring her energon. He could lose himself in the complicated, processor-scrambling process of rebuilding Cybertron from the ruin Megatron had left it as. It was a distraction he needed and craved, and part of him almost enjoyed the daily verbal sparring he got into with the newly elected Senators in their crumbling council seats.

That was until they decided to make a public summons, and demand the presence of the Prime and his mate. Now, for the first time in the decacyles since their marriage, Optimus was forced to seek her out. To make a request and hope she didn't spit at it. It was humiliating, more so than having to declare lies of loving her in front of the entire planet. 

Though his hand was a dead weight by his side, he managed to heft it against her sealed chamber doors in a single knock. “Airachnid,” he called out, a second precaution against startling her. He wasn't expecting her to actually invite him in, but the door didn't resist as he pushed it open. The room was almost as he remembered it, a relic of the Cybertron he left behind to hunt Megatron and the Allspark across the stars, aside from freshened furnishings and the femme (in clean armour, thank Primus) perched before the balcony viewport, holding something squirming in her lap while another lump curled up by her peds-

Hatchlings. He’d forgotten the rumours that Megatron had spawned many batches with her, mostly because he couldn't imagine either of them bothering with something so helpless as offspring. Yet from a distance, Airachnid actually seemed to know what she was doing with them, a femme at her chest and a tiny mech yawning against her leg. Unwillingly he recalled the times Elita had mused about raising a family, a mech and a femme clasped to her chestplates in the haven after the war... and his spark threatened to collapse if he didn't stop thinking of her immediately. The only other alternative was remembering their sire and letting his spark rebuild itself on a foundation of hatred. But... it was hard for any Cybertronian to dislike a hatchling, let alone hate one; especially so for a Prime, the guardian of the entire planet much like how a batch carrier was the guardian of her children. Solus Prime herself was the carrier of the very first generation, the remaining twelve Primes each siring a different kind of spark. What had gone so wrong so long ago that a spark like Megatron's was allowed to slip through the cracks?   
Airachnid, well, he couldn't blame the Primes for her faults. Techno-organics didn't belong to any known lineage of the Thirteen, didn't even link to the Allspark. They had no place on Cybertron, yet here one was cradling her half-breed young and only just noticing Optimus standing aside her.

"Scorpia and Antares," she said, angling towards him only slightly so her back legs could still have a clear path to slicing through his chassis if they felt the need to. "The only hatchlings to survive the Autobot assault on Darkmount. Should I tell them about how you murdered all their siblings as well as their sire?" She had the extraordinary ability to hide a snarl in a smile, and there was a rare moment with Optimus being caught off guard. He hadn't supervised the storming of Megatron's last fortress, with the warlord himself waiting for him deeper in Kaon. In the aftermath no one had reported finding any incubator pods, let alone destroying them. Either she was lying, or he had savages in his ranks. And either way, he wasn't going to let her provoke him so easily. 

“I hope I am not interrupting," he said, holding his servos out in front of him palms upward. The universal symbol of showing he was unarmed, or in this case that his intentions were peaceful.

Airachnid glanced at the gesture and scoffed. "I hardly think it matters to you whether you are or not. And I know you’re not here to bathe in my company, so out with it.” She let her hatchling (Scorpia, she must have been) clamber down to join her brother at their mother's peds as she stood up, squaring her shoulders to match Optimus' habitually stiff stance. She still had to crane her neck to look up at him, so at least he kept the upper hand on that front.

“Our presence is requested in the Council Hall," he told her. "The Senate think it would bode best for the new Primacy to preside over their first address.”

Airachnid scoffed again, it seemed to be her favourite thing to do other than hiss and insult. “‘The Primacy’? Is that what they’re calling us?”

_‘No. Depending who is asked, one of us is nothing more than a murderer.’_ Though the Decepticons couldn't stage a true uprising with their only surviving leader now officially allied to an Autobot, it didn't stop their whispered bitterness overflowing into soldier's audios. Optimus didn't think it would be beneficial to mention that, though.   
"I can have your hatchlings tended to by a nursery drone during our absence if you wish." At that, Antares' shifted awake and his tiny optics went wide as he noticed the colossal Prime towering over him. His whimper of fear was hardly fitting of one of Megatron's heirs, but all Optimus could do was push down the sudden urge to comfort him. 

“I don't know how Autobots raise their young, but Decepticons can care for themselves as soon as they break their shells," Airachnid curtly informed him. "I won't have anyone of your ilk laying a hand on them.”

Cold air hissed through Optimus' vents as he sighed. “As I have told you before, Airachnid, there is no distinction between Autobots and Decepticons now.” That was the official statement, despite the fact that the Autobot symbol was plastered onto every surface of the planet in some attempt to simply erase that of the Decepticons from existence. There were still trials and hearings being held all over the planet for soldiers of all ranks begging for a pardon, anything to absolve them of blame for following a dead tyrant. Starscream himself had been only narrowly avoiding execution by spilling out the secrets of everyone else. 

Airachnid could have known nothing of what was happening on Cybertron, hadn't even set foot on the rebuilt pathways or seen anything different than the view the Tower allowed her, yet her next words held more truth than anything Alpha Trion and his Quill could have scrawled out. “Then just how do you tell between those who love you, and those who want your spark on a silver platter, Prime?”  
"They tend to make it obvious enough," he lied, cracking his digits into tight fists and passing one last glance over the hatchlings, noting the curious stare of the daughter, before turning back towards the beckoning door. “You have five klicks to prepare yourself for audience. I will meet with you before we enter the council chamber.”

He heard her quell a laugh behind him, kept himself walking onwards as she simpered, “If you say so, _darling husband_.”

**Author's Note:**

> It was quite interesting getting to write Optimus as much more aggressive and blunt as I usually have him (it is Bayverse after all, and I actually love how brutal he’s allowed to be in the movies). I have an idea for another chapter or two in mind if anyone's interested, but for now I'm just going to leave it as it is.
> 
> (Also a little unrelated but I headcanon that Airachnid was the carrier of the hatchlings seen in ROTF with Starscream put in charge of feeding and guarding them. And she'd have kicked Megatron's aft if she found out he was letting their babies starve to death >.>)


End file.
